Studio Coffee Run: Tintin cast, etc.

§ At last, we have our mocap Tintin and it is Jamie Bell, who starred in BILLY ELLIOT, JUMPER and…oh yeah, he was that Jimmy kid in KING KONG, so we should have seen that coming. (Peter Jackson is co-producing the proposed TINTIN trilogy.) If you are thinking Bell is too old, as we mentioned before, it’s going to be motion capture to cgi. In addition, Daniel Craig has been cast as Red Rackham! Gad Elmaleh, Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook have also been cast. The screenplay is by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish (variously, Dr. WHO, SHAUN OF THE DEAD), which bodes well.

Sadly, they’re now reporting that production on Imagi’s Astroboy movie appears to have shut down. This comes just days after I last reported on the film, on how it appears to have just scraped through its troubles with the recession. They have no official word on the matter, just information from those that have been working on the film.

§ A new comic-book based movie! It seems that Kevin Monroe (TMNT and WAR MONKEYS) will direct El Zombo Fantasma which ws based on his own comic for Dark Horse.

Published in 2005, the film is being pitched as a “Latino Hellboy”. The story follows “the mysterious murder of the world’s most notorious Mexican wrestler who bargains his way out of an eternity of fiery damnation by returning to Los Angeles to play guardian angel to a troublesome teen, Belisa Montoya. He soon discovers that the teen is not what she seems and that their fates have been intertwined for centuries.” LatinoReview’s Kellvin Chavez and IESB’s Robert Santchez are among the film’s producers.

If this movie gets made, it will be one of the VERY VERY few comic books created by a director/actor/nerdlebrity to actually go to the screen.